Pelion
by Estoma
Summary: "I was just young enough to believe I deserved a guardian angel, then, and I believed long after I should have stopped."


**Author's note: ****For Jess, for the August GGE. Here is Cato/Clove AU, just for you. Using the prompt 'divine' and the challenge 'Explore a complicated relationship, does not have to be romantic' from Caesar's Palace.**

Have you ever seen a swift flying over the ranges? They are always the first birds to return in spring. They fly back when there's still ice in the air and in the heart of the clouds. Sometimes, they come too early. After a late spring storm has crashed over the Border Range you can find their broken little bodies among the rocks or even on the street. That is the saddest, a limp body in a doorway; the little creature must have known it was so close to shelter. But they are so eager to return home that they come early. Once, I was like that. So eager to return home, I chose to leave it. When the last storm of spring has spent itself in pointless fury against the ranges, the sky is for the swifts. It's so deep and blue, the birds nearly get lost in it, but they don't. They're like acrobats. I think they swoop and dive for the simple thrill of it. Against the sky they are specs, speech marks. I have never worked out what they are trying to say. I lost my chance to ask a long time ago.

I thought he was one of them at first. The air was tingling with that pure sort of feeling that comes before the sun has burnt off all the dew. My legs swung out over the edge of the quarry but I wasn't looking down at the tangle of blackberry canes between my feet. I could not look down when the sky beckoned, and oh, it did. He was as graceful as any mountain swift and he dove and banked with their sense of gay abandonment. I used to wonder if he snatched butterflies from the air, too. Their papery wings would coat his mouth like icing sugar. But I never saw him eat a butterfly. I think he lived on squashed jam sandwiches. If he ate anything else, I must not have been paying attention. Perhaps he hunted at night while I slept.

He was the best acrobat by far. His daring put the agile swifts to shame. I think he flew to the clouds that day, or perhaps he came from them. There were times I was sure his very soul must look like the sun-gilded and golden bellies of the clouds. Once, I wondered if he pushed his way up from the tumbled rocks at the bottom of the deepest quarry. Did he shake brimstone and cooling lava from his wings? I never asked; we usually talked about me. Once, he landed by my side with a whip of cloud tucked behind his ear like cotton wool.

I followed his movements and a yearning and a sickness grew in my gut. I knew he was not one of the spring swifts, unless he was their king. I forgot that Fallon was jogging around the other side of the quarry to meet me, and when I did think of him, I felt my blood surge possessively; this crisp and wonderful morning, I did not want to share even with my mentor.

When he dove, falling like a stone, I was sure he had seen me. I was sure he meant for me to see him. He always knew me so well; he knew even then that my heart dropped with him. He fell right out of my sight, but I felt no fear. I was right not to. He rose from between the twin peaks, Mt Pelion and Mt Geryon and in five of my rapid heartbeats he was above them. Even now, I cannot look at Pelion and Geryon without a flutter in my chest. I tell myself that the cold air brings the tears to my eyes. But he never liked when I told lies. I think he would have preferred I told everyone about him. He would have said it is better to be honest, and I would have told him I did not want to be called mad. We never had that conversation. Most say I've lost my mind.

How can I describe what it felt like to see something that has neither right nor place to walk the earth? Later I realised he had every right, and none. You close your eyes and count to ten, a childish trick, but you can barely keep from looking. His image soared in the darkness behind my eyelids. I could always point to him with my eyes closed. Even as your mind tells you it is impossible and a cruel voice says that you have lost your senses, another whispers that it is true. You know it is true, and your heart will burst with longing should you be wrong. I suppose that is how Fallon must have felt when the dragon rose from the bloody sunset, but his truth was horrific – mine was beautiful, until it wasn't.

He had the most beautiful wings. I felt a fool to have likened him to the darting swifts and in that moment I hated them for their fragility and temporary beauty. Here was grace. Here was something much better, and much worse than I deserved. Most of the time, he showed me his smiles. He dove right down into the pit of the old quarry. When he came up, I thought he had a handful of flesh, torn from some poor sinner. It turned out to be blackberries, not yet ripe. Even now, that is the strongest memory I have of him; I see him rising from the pit with blood smearing his hands and mouth. But I was never afraid for myself. That was the first time I saw his face.

I think if he had come to me any later, I would not have seen him. But he knew that. My childhood was fading quickly, tempered with my adult mind. I resented and longed for the change. Later, when we stood together, Fallon did not see him. It might have been that my mentor had killed eight children last year, or perhaps he had left his childhood too far behind to grasp it.

Those wings swept my hair in tangles and I imagined falling from the quarry to open my own. They would fill with air and I would soar. I had no wings of my own, but he promised me his. He stood before me with those dark pinions arched over his back. I could feel their heat. Later I learnt that his heart beat twice as fast as mine, nearly as quickly as a bird's. It was a better heart than mine. He let me touch his feathers and I buried my face in them. The smell of clouds and dirt always lingered about him. Once he was gone, I could never smell the clouds again. They were not the same when they reached the ground as snowflakes.

We sat together. He didn't say anything for a long time, but he offered me half a jam sandwich. I mopped up the smear of blackberries from his palm with the crust. I kept one hand in his warm feathers and felt the bone underneath. Part of me was disappointed; I thought he was a spirit of sky and stone, raised by the swifts just for me. Well, his name was Cato, and he said he wasn't made for me but he had chosen me anyway. I was just young enough to believe I deserved a guardian angel, then, and I believed long after I should have stopped.

_Why do I get a guardian angel?_ I asked him. _Does everyone get one?_

_Only special people. I had a hunch you'd need me. I asked if I could have you_. Cato never told me who he asked, and who had the right to give me to him. If I ever find them, I'll tell them thank you while I put a cold blade to their throat.

When Fallon jogged around the corner I wanted to shout at him; I wasn't afraid my angel would fly away like a frightened sparrow, but I did not want to share. But my trainer looked through him; he saw the lip of the quarry where I saw dark plumage, a black t-shirt and ragged jeans. He didn't chide me for not jogging as I expected he would. My angel flew over the ute the whole way back to the training academy. He made a game of swerving in front of the windscreen, but I soon grew tired of it; I knew he would not leave me so soon.

Cato, my angel, used to follow me everywhere. At times, I grew annoyed with him; he made me laugh when I was sparring with Fallon and I was thrown so hard that I could not draw breath. Cato helped me sit up and put his cool hands on my forehead. At night he would hang from the rafters above my head, his knees hooked over the wood. He wrapped his wings around himself like a bat and I could see the faint shine of his eyes in the dark. I stopped having nightmares about going to the Games and I looked forward to them. None of the girls in my dormitory ever felt the shadow he cast over them. I only asked Cato into my bed once. I was saddened to learn that angels have nothing between their legs. He used to watch me curiously when I pushed my hands beneath the sheets and my waistband.

* * *

It was reassuring to see Cato flying high over the trees, a darker spot on the indigo sky. I started to wonder if he was losing his grace; he no longer reminded me of a swift, but a hunting owl. I wanted to ask him if he snatched bats from the air and snapped their little wings in his hands, but he shared a jam sandwich with me before I went to sleep. I cannot stand to have jam in my house, now, even when my children ask for it. I do let them have blackberries if they pick them and wash their hands before I see the stains.

On the first day, he left me to take to the heights. He found me a clear stream and I saw his quick, rippling reflection on the water. He skimmed so low that his sneakers touched the surface. I wondered if he had always looked so scruffy. He ignored me when I suggested he bathe in the stream. Instead, he kept a lookout while I did. I was alone but for Cato; my partner had been killed in the first ninety seconds and Cato told me to trust no other. I always believed, and believed in him.

His wings kept me warm. I curled against him and he arched his wings to cover us both. I never wondered if he was uncomfortable sleeping on the ground. I liked to fall asleep to clouds and dirt, but in the mornings I noticed feathers on the ground. I gathered them up and put them in my pocket. They hang above my baby's basinet now. Each morning he took to the air, he climbed a little slower, but I did not ask him about it; my mind was filled with the four children whose pale faces I had transposed on the sky.

When the last day came, Cato walked by my side. I would have been comforted but I knew he did not choose to ground himself. I think, now, that I did. I could see the bare patches on his wings. There were too many feathers to pick up. I held his hand and didn't mention that he had grown claws where his fingers used to be. He made sure they did not scratch my skin.

They called it a Feast, but I wanted for nothing. I had Cato. We lay together to wait, then, I let Cato rest while I killed the redhead who hid in the golden horn. After, Cato and I split a stale jam sandwich. We waited for the others to come, and they did. The first was the dark boy who had taken to the fields. His skin was the colour of Cato's wings. He struck me with a rock that was meant to end my life, but the bruises appeared on my angel's face and his teeth shattered like glass. I finished the boy with my knife in his gut and comforted Cato with blood on my hands. He pulled away from me for the first time; my stained hands burnt him, but he did not leave me.

We both saw the dark-haired girl. I did not need Cato to tell me she was an angel, too; her wings were less tarnished than Cato's.

_Why can I see her?_ I asked him. He told me that her child must be thinking about her very hard, must be concentrating all of himself on her. I said that he must love her, and realised that nobody else had ever seen Cato. I asked him if I could kill her.

_You could, but you wouldn't like what you'd become, and I wouldn't forgive myself_, he said.

I watched them fight. I did nothing. Their feathers littered the ground and made a thick cloud about them. For the first time I was frightened; I was not frightened of Cato, but I felt fear all the same. When she was dead I looked for a body, but I saw nothing. There might have been a rustle in the trees. I picked up one of her silvery-grey feathers but Cato looked at me with tears in his eyes. I dropped it. I'd never seen him cry before.

One of his wings was broken. It dragged behind him until I picked it up and draped it over my arm. I led him back to the lake and helped him to lie by the shallow edge. I washed dirt and blood from his wings and turned the lake brown. I breathed in clouds and dirt for the last time.

_What about the last boy, now his angel's gone?_ I asked.

_She held him to life. He put too much of himself in her. He won't last long, now_.

I wondered if I had given enough of myself to my angel? I did not ponder long; he and I knew the answer. He had never asked anything of me. His dark feathers swirled in the water and more fell away at my touch, but he still pressed his wings into my hands. I think he always knew what loving me would make of him, but he chose me anyway. I tell myself that and hold my baby close; what else am I to say if I want to keep from losing my mind as they say I have?

The poor baker's son slipped away while waiting for his angel to bring back the medicine and heal the gash Cato left on his leg. Wounds from angels' swords fester, it seemed. My Cato left me with the sound of the trumpets. I did not get up from where I sat with his head in my lap. I wondered if I had never taken a knife to that first fearful child, would his wings still be strong and beautiful? But he would not have chosen me had I not. When the hovercraft's ladder dropped, I was hauled up into the air. It was not a thing like soaring in Cato's arms. I looked down, expecting to see his body fade. It blurred from the tears in my eyes, but I watched him until he was no larger than a swift above the mountains.


End file.
